Hockey (often called “Ice Hockey”) is a fast-paced, physical sport in which many children and adults participate, particularly in North America and Europe. Historically, hockey has been a primarily male sport; however, the recent creation of the Women's World Hockey Championship, as well as the addition of Women's Hockey as an Olympic event has vastly increased the number of female players in the last decade. As a result, there are now more players, of both sexes, picking up the sport for the first time than at any previous time in history.
One of the primary attributes of a good hockey player is the ability to make good split-second choices about where and when to shoot, pass and carry the puck. In order to make these choices, the player needs to be aware of the location, speed, and direction of travel of the other players on the ice (“seeing the ice”). In order to see the ice properly, the player needs to be able to control the puck with their stick while keeping their head (eyes) up, not looking at their stick and the puck.
This skill of controlling the puck without looking at it is very difficult to learn and master, particularly for younger children who are still developing their basic motor skills. At the same time, it is a skill that must be developed in order to successful play hockey at more competitive levels and gain the most enjoyment from participating in the sport. A complicating factor in developing the skill is that the players are constantly in motion and the skill needs to be developed in conjunction with developing skating ability. In other words, it is still insufficient to be able to control the puck without looking if it cannot also be done while skating.
Another concern is player safety. A player who is looking down at the puck and not seeing the ice is more vulnerable to having a collision, whether as an intentional body check from another player or merely through inadvertent contact. Additionally, as the player is not prepared for the collision, the severity of the collision and risk of injury as a result is substantially increased. Parenthetically, it is noted that even professional players are vulnerable in this fashion, either through not having fully developed the skill or simply being engaged in a play where it is required to look down at the puck (e.g. when a loose puck is caught up in the players skates). Thus, the safety of the player with proper puck-handling skill is protected by minimizing risk, not eliminating it.
To address this safety concern, the Heads Up Hockey program, conceived in the early-90's by Dr. Alan Ashare, the chairman of USA Hockey's safety and protective equipment committee, emphasizes what players can do to play safer, smarter and better hockey: “The first—and perhaps the most important—rule of Heads Up Hockey is, “Heads up, don't duck!”. Whenever you see potential impact coming your way, whether it is another player, the boards or the goal post, you should never duck your head. When your head is ducked down, the head and neck are much more vulnerable to injury. When your head is up, the neck is given maximum flexibility to endure impact without injury, because the natural curve of the neck is not compromised. When your head is down, the spine's normal curve is straightened, and any impact can cause injury.”
Balanced against the need to learn heads-up skills is the extrinsic admonition to players and the intrinsic motivation not to lose control of the puck. With this concern in mind, most players, if not all, learn to stickhandle and control the puck by looking down and watching it while performing various training exercises and practice drills. The players' fear over losing control of the puck creates a compulsion to, if not continually look down, at least regularly look down to confirm that control of the puck is maintained.
This compulsion results in a learning process where players first learn to stickhandle and control the puck while looking down at it, and then learn to maintain control with their head up. The transition is generally difficult, particularly for younger players. Additionally, because the players have never discovered or experienced the benefits of seeing the ice, they lack the motivation and perseverance to become fully comfortable or capable of playing without looking down at the puck. Players can become frustrated with a lack of progress and stop participating in hockey at an earlier age than if they had developed the proper head up, seeing the ice skills from the start.
Instruction in this manner tends to limit the development and participation of all but those players who can most readily adapt to this process. By analogy, consider if the preferred manner of learning to drive an automobile was to focus on the placement and use of the steering wheel, pedals and gearshift before looking up through the windshield. If driving was taught in such a fashion, most learner drivers, intent on controlling the instruments per se, would take much longer to develop the perceptual skills needed to navigate safely past pedestrians and vehicles on streets and highways. Similarly, hockey players who play with their heads down in order to focus on the stick and puck, either never adequately learn or take much longer to learn to navigate safely and effectively past other players and obstacles, due to being unable to watch the game in front of them.
A related requirement is for the player to keep their stick on the ice surface as much as possible, both with and without the puck. Players who develop the habit of keeping their stick on the ice at all times also stay in a proper ‘ready’ posture for receiving passes and reacting to plays. Players without this habit tend to straighten up their body during play without the puck, pulling their stick off the ice surface and delaying their ability to react to passes and loose pucks. Also, players who have straightened up are less able to absorb incidental body contact or body checks. By developing proper heads-up puck control skills, players will also keep themselves in proper posture, leading to improved play as well as improved safety.
A sport functionally identical to hockey, sledge hockey, has been developed for people with disabilities and has been included in the ParaOlympic games. A sledge hockey stick is similar to a conventional hockey stick, with a shorter shaft (as the player is positioned closer to the ice surface) and a pick on the end of the shaft the player can use to propel themselves along the ice surface. Maintaining control of the puck is difficult for sledge hockey players, even more so than in conventional hockey. Ideally, any training aid developed for use by hockey players should also be quickly and easily adapted for use in sledge hockey, in order to enable more participation and more rewarding involvement in that sport.
Also notable is that in sports similar to hockey where control of the puck or ball is aided by the equipment, with lacrosse and ringette as common examples, players exhibit team play skills at an earlier age as there is no development time lost to learning ball or puck control skills, nor is there a skill learning impediment created by the need to do so.
Several types of training aids for stickhandling and puck control are known in the art. One type is exemplified in U.S. Pat. No. 3,863,917 to Beale and U.S. Pat. No. 6,716,120 to Normand. Both Beale and Normand disclose modified hockey sticks and puck which use a tether to connect the puck to the blade of the stick. The presence of the tether allows the player to readily retrieve a puck which has been lost from a failure to properly control it during stickhandling. However, neither Beale nor Normand permit for participation and use by more than one player for passing, checking and shooting drills, or playing hockey. The tether limits the usefulness of the Beale and Normand sticks to single-player stickhandling only.
An additional limitation of tether-type device as disclosed by Beale and Normand is the need for a modified or customized puck for use with the tether. Ideally, a training aid should be functional with a standard puck (or ball, for dry land training and ball-based versions of hockey).
Another type of training aid is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,653,753 to Scarry and U.S. Pat. No. 6,174,248 to Lawlor et al. Scarry and Lawlor both disclose variants of shields that are attached to a hockey stick at a location above the blade. The shield prevents the player from seeing the blade of the stick and the puck when it is in the vicinity of the blade. While the shield devices of Scarry and Lawlor may act to discourage players from looking down to confirm control of the puck, they do not provide any actual assistance to the player in maintaining control. Furthermore, it is not necessarily desirable that the player have no ability to look down and see the puck and stick blade. In passing and shooting situations, a quick look down to confirm the location of the puck is not wholly undesirable.
There is a need for a hockey stick training device, which removes the learning impediment caused by players keeping their heads down in order to control the puck. By facilitating control of the puck, the hockey stick training device allows players to discover and experience the predominant benefits of seeing the ice vis à vis controlling the puck. The device should provide a means for preventing the player from losing control of the puck. The same device should also allow the stick to function in a conventional manner to permit its use in multiple player drills and game situations.